From THE FIGHTING MACHINISTS, A CENTURY OF
STRUGGLE
by Robert G. Rodden

Radio and the Radical Right

In an open letter reminding members of the importance of
registering and voting in the 1964 Presidential election Hayes noted
the multiplication of "extremists, hate mongers and fascist
elements trying to impose their ideas . . . on the American
people". While every generation must fight to preserve freedom
against extremists on both the right and left, Hayes was responding
to an unusually strong surge by the radical right in the early
'60's.

Parading under such names as the John Birch Society, Americans
for Constitutional Action, Christian Crusade, Conservative Society
of America and the Liberty Lobby, hate groups saturated the air
waves with suspicion and fear. A former head of the USIA in the
Eisenhower Administration, Arthur Larson, found that these and
similar groups were bankrolling more than 700 regularly scheduled
radio and television broadcasts each week. According to Larson they
aimed to undermine democracy by convincing the American people that
"four successive presidents were traitors, most of the judges
on the highest court should be impeached and most of the major
legislation by Congress is unconstitutional or socialistic, or
both."

Seeking and antidote to this steady drumbeat of reaction from
the far right, the Machinist staff developed a radio program,
"The World of Labor," for sponsorship by local and
district lodges. It was initiated in April 1964 and originally
provided a weekly ten-minute look at the positive side of trade
unionism. It featured stories of contracts negotiated and benefits
won without strikes, told the human side of injustices corrected
through the grievance procedure, described ways in which union
projects contributed to public welfare, explained why most working
families were supporting Medicare, provided a forum for friendly
members of Congress and generally projected a positive, upbeat view
of the IAM and the labor movement. Tapes were made available to
local and district lodges for sponsorship in their home communities.
Editor Gordon Cole suggested that scheduling "The World of
Labor" on small independent stations during early morning drive
times could limit costs to as little as $6.50 a week in Biloxi or
$35.00 a week on Long Island. Within six months the program was
sponsored by local and district lodges in forty-eight communities.
Within a few months the format was changed, from ten minutes once a
week to five minutes twice a week, to make "The World of
Labor" acceptable to more stations. At the peak of the five
years during which the program was produced before falling victim to
hard times it was heard twice a week in seventy-five cities and
towns from New York to California.

In Your Guts You Know He's Nuts

The Republican Convention that met in San Francisco's famed
Cow Palace in July 1964, provided self-evident testimony to the
strength and success of the ultra right wing in America. Although
always frankly the party of big business, past GOP platforms usually
made some small bow toward organized labor. The 1964 Platform
Committee, tailored to the ideology of candidate Senator Barry
Goldwater, ignored recommendations presented by Meany, Hayes and
other union spokesmen. Goldwater could hardly be as kooky as some of
this followers on the lunatic fringe. But the intensity of his
opposition to unions was almost frightening. A millionaire
department store owner from Phoenix, his political career was
launched some years earlier when he agreed to head the merchants'
section of a right-to-work campaign in Arizona. His biography, Conscience
Of a Conservative, described labor's "enormous economic and
political power . . . as the real evil in the labor field".
Goldwater suggested remedies ranging from the compulsory open shop
and prohibition of all union political action to state control of
labor-management relations and outlawing industry-wide bargaining.

During his first two terms in the Senate Goldwater registered
two right votes on sixty key issues selected by the IAM's
Legislative Department as important to IAM members. He opposed
Social Security as a form of welfarism, was against health care for
the aged and consistently fought federal aid to education and
national standards for unemployment insurance. When he condemned
graduated income taxes a columnist asked if he thought it fair for
someone making $5,000 a year to pay the same rate as someone earning
$5 million a year. He responded "Yes I do."

He campaigned for the presidency under the slogan, "In
your heart you know he's right." Machinists and other union
members looked at some of his more bizarre proposals--to sell TVA
for a dollar, to saw off the Eastern Seaboard, eliminate rural
electrification and replace the Supreme Court--and in their guts
they thought he was nuts.

All The Way With LBJ

The IAM's enthusiasm for Goldwater's opponent was heard in the
explosion of cheers that rocked the hall when Lyndon B. Johnson
strode into the 1964 Grand Lodge Convention at Miami Beach. The
convention hotel, including the hall, was so heavily damaged by
Hurricane Cleo two weeks earlier the Executive Council faced the
possibility of postponement. But when city and state authorities
learned the President was scheduled to speak at the Machinists'
Convention, they scrambled to expedite the craftsmen and materials
needed to put the Deauville Hotel and its convention hall back
together in a hurry.

Johnson's appearance was a first for IAM Convention delegates.
Many candidates had come in previous campaigns to present themselves
and their programs at Grand Lodge Conventions, but LBJ's stop was
the first by an occupant of the White House. With half the
population of Southern Florida competing for tickets with spouses
and guests of delegates, the convention hall had to be reset;
delegate tables were moved out and 4,000 chairs moved in.

Preparations for the President's arrival began ten days
earlier when an advance party, including a Secret Service detail,
arrived to check security and communications. To insure that the
President could be instantly reached by Washington in a national or
international emergency, direct telephone lines to the White House
were set up in the limousine he would be riding, in the Deauville
lobby, just inside the convention door and on the podium. According
to the Machinist, LBJ's entourage included

A press plane from Washington
with . . . 60 reporters and photographers, and a total of 72
other writers and cameramen from Miami and other nearby
Florida cities. A special platform was erected in the
convention hall for 12 TV, newsreel and motion picture cameras
that photographed the session. Sex bands played fro the
President along the route. The crowds cheered. A block from
the hotel the President stopped his car to walk the rest of
the way and shake hands. The Deauville Hotel lobby was
decorated with signs welcoming LBJ. The hall was packed with
more than 4,000 people, many of them standing. A ten-piece
band played "Hail to the Chief" as the President
entered. It was completely drowned out as the delegates roared
their greeting . . .

Johnson's remarks were anti-climatic, being mostly a rehash of
past triumphs and a call for future progress. He spoke at length
about the need for unity, peace and prosperity without once
mentioning Viet Nam. But, as was true of Kennedy's speech at the
1960 Convention four years earlier, it really didn't matter what
Johnson said. The delegates were with LBJ all the way, interrupting
with applause thirty-two times--the loudest response greeting his
call for Congress to provide hospital care for the aged under Social
Security.

During the convention the delegates debated propositions to
increase GLR and Executive Council salaries (the first in eight
years), to increase per capita by 50¢ a month and, the old
perennial, to elect GVP's by territory. Though the salary increases
were approved by voice vote the propositions to increase per capita
and elect GVP's by territory were both shot down by wide margins in
roll call votes.

In other noteworthy actions the delegates changed the name to
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers,
abolished the requirement that one GVP be assigned solely to
railroad matters and raised minimum monthly local lodge dues from
$3.00 to $4.00. When these and all the other actions taken at the
convention were submitted to a referendum of the entire membership
in December, the proposed increases in salaries and per capita were
voted down.

14(b)--Part of the Way With LBJ

Union votes contributed mightily to Johnson's 61.1% share of
the popular vote in the 1964 Presidential election. Analyzing the
returns, MNPL Coordinator Jack O'Brien estimated that following
organized labor's most successful registration drive, 79% of the
union members who voted cast ballots for the Johnson-Humphrey
ticket. Volunteer cash contributions to the MNPL were also the
highest to this point. LBJ's coattails were wide enough to add
between twenty and twenty-five liberal votes in the House* and two
or three in the Senate.

*Including IAM
member John Race, chairman of the bargaining and grievance
committee of Local Lodge 1420 in Fond-du-Lac, Wisconsin.

Undiscouraged by memories of legislative failures after union
votes elected Harry Truman in 1948, the labor movement looked
forward confidently to enactment, finally, of Medicare, improvements
in the wage-hour law, federal standards for unemployment insurance,
creation of a poverty program and federal aid to education. Most of
all organized labor set its sights on repeal of Section 14(b) of the
Taft-Hartley Act.

The battle for Medicare, which began with Truman in 1945,
brought Johnson into direct confrontation with the mighty American
Medical Association. The doctors' lobby had checkmated both Truman
and Kennedy. In the battle with Johnson they spent $5,000 a day to
keep 23 high-powered lobbyists on Capital Hill full time. Johnson,
the master politician, not only knew how to twist arms, but which
arms to twist. In a little more than six months he was able to got
to Independence, Missouri, and lay a Medicare bill for the aged
before Harry S Truman. By the time the first session of the 89th
Congress adjourned, LBJ had pushed through most of the rest of his
program including a stack of education, civil rights, jobs, and
poverty bills.

The only bill Johnson did not push was the one organized labor
considered most crucial: repeal of Section 14(b). In May, when
Congress was already loaded down with the rest of the President's
program, he briefly mentioned repeal of Section 14(b) in a message
recommending amendment to the wage-hour law and unemployment
insurance laws. In what seemed almost an afterthought he appended
the "hope" that repeal of Section 14(b) would reduce
"conflicts in our national labor policy that for several years
have divided Americans in various states."

Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz did better with a strong
statement before the House Labor Subcommittee, calling right-to-work
laws "a disruptive competition between the states carried on in
the form of efforts to attract industry by representations of a
political climate less conducive to unionism and union wages and
working conditions." But that was almost the extent of the
Administration's support. When the House voted 221-203 to repeal
Section 14(b) that was as far as it got. In the Senate GOP Minority
Leader Everett Dirksen marshaled a small band of Northern
Republicans and Southern Democrats to filibuster the repealer to
death. Dirksen was a small-town politician from down state Illinois
who was known as "the Wizard of Ooze" for his oily manner
and unctuous speaking voice. A majority of the Senate agreed with
Tennessee's freshman Senator Ross Bass that "if you ride the
buggy, you ought to feed the old mare" and were pledged to vote
for repeal. But they never got the chance. With Dirksen calling the
signals, the Old Guard-Dixiecrat minority was able to fight off
cloture, a motion to end debate and bring the question to a vote.

In the post-mortem, friendly senators told union lobbyists
that despite Dirksen's filibuster, 14(b) could have been repealed if
LBJ had expressed serious interest in the legislation and if rank
and file union members had shown more support through the mail.
While John Birchers and other right wing groups generated stacks of
mail in favor of compulsory open shop legislation, few workers
bothered to write and tell senators how they felt about laws that
protected free riders.